Mankind's defining achievement, is the Internal Combustion Engine

No other invention or development, not the wheel, the printing press, the computer, nuclear energy, space travel, written language or anything else anyone could name, has so shaped, controlled, extended and limited our develpoment as a species and a society as the ICE. Our methods of travel, the means of employment of millions of people around the world, the economies of all the industrialized nations, are dependent upon the ICE or the peripheral industries related to it's manufacture and use. The ICE is directly and indirectly responsible for most of the resource exploitation and environmental pollution on the planet.

Even the optimists among us would have to admit 2018 was a challenging year. The fractured world that became the focus of our 2018 Annual Meeting a year ago came under further pressure from populist rhetoric and rising nationalist agendas. At the same time, the urgent need for coordinated global action in areas such as climate change, inequality and the impact of automation on jobs became more intense.